The Illinois Biometric Privacy Statute Survived a Recent Attack. But the Struggle Continues.

Supporters of unregulated corporate facial recognition systems are waging a sneak attack against our nation’s strongest protection of biometric privacy. On one side are business interests seeking to profit by using invasive facial recognition technologies to identify and track vast numbers of people without their consent.On the other side are EFF and many other digital privacy and consumer rights organizations. Our side won the latest round. But the future of biometric privacy will require all of our constant vigilance.

In an attack on ad-blocking software, the Newspaper Association of America filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission last week, asking the agency to ban a variety of functions, including “evading metered subscription systems and paywalls,” and ad substitution. NAA also called into question new business models that aim to replace online advertising. Newspapers are concerned about the effects that ad-blockers may have on their revenues and their ability to understand and market to their readership. But some of what NAA is asking for would threaten important and widely used privacy software, like Tor and EFF’s own Privacy Badger, and chip away at Internet users’ ability to control their own browsing experience.

There's an action movie cliché in which a cop inspects the body of a felled assassin or foot soldier and discovers a curious tattoo that ultimately leads to a rogue black-ops squadron, a secret religious sect, or an underground drug trafficking ring.

The trope isn’t entirely Hollywood fantasy, but the reality of emerging tattoo recognition technology is closer to a dystopian tech thriller. Soon, we may see police departments using algorithms to scrape tattoos from surveillance video or cops in the field using mobile apps to analyze tattoos during stops. Depending on the tattoo, such technology could be used to instantly reveal personal information, such as your religious beliefs or political affiliations.

This week, the full Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals—in a decision that impacts residents in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia—held that you have no expectation of privacy in historical location data generated by your cell phone. This decision, which follows decisions from four other federal appellate courts, means that now, in the vast majority of states, federal law enforcement agents don’t need to get a warrant to get access to this data from a cell service provider.